Kristen’s Chickens and Farming Ventures

[Kris5902]

I was planning on including the dark Cornish in my long term meat breeding goals selecting for size and crossing with other heavier bodied breeds... got a call back that the hatch isn’t going to happen until May 1, still waiting to find out if that’s because of the dark Cornish, if so we will scrap that for now and just go with the rangers...

As for trailers... which one? Lol there’s the 25’ one we currently live in while we build... the utility one we use for getting hay and such, and the cargo trailer that is my “garage” (yes I managed to condense a 1800 square foot garage into a 6x12 enclosed cargo trailer! Go me... although the table saw and chop saw have been taken out and live in the barn so the shelving is accessible).

I’m thinking if I reduce one dimension of my originally planned as 6x6 meat tractors to whatever I can fit on the deck of the utility trailer, I can stand them on their sides, strap them in and drive them out into the fields rather than having to haul them by hand. My current challenge is that the two fields I would want to run them in (closest to me) are hay fields... so no dice there until after June...

 

[aart]

and the cargo trailer that is my “garage” (yes I managed to condense a 1800 square foot garage into a 6x12 enclosed cargo trailer!

Ha!
My daughter lives in an 8x20 Tiny House she built, and has a cargo trailer that I call the 'Closet' where she stores all the stuff that won't fit in the TH.

 

[Kris5902]

I am so not tiny house material... the trailer is driving me crazy! At least tiny houses are built for living in... I’m pretty close to ripping out the built in sofa and dinette and cutting holes in the bed frame to improve airflow and address mold issues, but I’m afraid of what I will find... This trailer is not meant for winter conditions, living in for two years, or my husband and I with our reading habits and tendency to be disorganized. With enough space and book shelves we can keep things in check, but in this RV it just spirals out of control and you need to move things to do things.

 

[Ribh]

I am so not tiny house material... the trailer is driving me crazy! At least tiny houses are built for living in... I’m pretty close to ripping out the built in sofa and dinette and cutting holes in the bed frame to improve airflow and address mold issues, but I’m afraid of what I will find... This trailer is not meant for winter conditions, living in for two years, or my husband and I with our reading habits and tendency to be disorganized. With enough space and book shelves we can keep things in check, but in this RV it just spirals out of control and you need to move things to do things.

It's the books. I've culled & culled & am still begging for more bookshelves. I swear they multiply in the night!

Hitting all the wrong buttons today. How long is your trailer. We had 25 feet with 3 kids & a dalmatian. Drove me close to insane & it kept raining the entire time we built.

 

[Kris5902]

Our house plans have a library... our storage locker in the city is 10x20 and packed solid front to back and stacked 5-6 feet high minimum! I believe if I recall correctly we had 20 small moving boxes of books... they are packed at the back, sorted by genre and author. I have three long dressers stacked one on top of the other, and my dining chairs atop that... I think the locker has 14 foot ceilings and whenever possible I used vertical space to full advantage.

The biggest issue with the trailer and books is the humidity... and hence the mold issues as well. With the freezing temperatures of winter, single pane windows and walls only an inch or two thick, throw in wet propane heating and our books were getting damp! I’m due for a major bleaching day!

 

[Kris5902]

It's the books. I've culled & culled & am still begging for more bookshelves. I swear they multiply in the night!

Hitting all the wrong buttons today. How long is your trailer. We had 25 feet with 3 kids & a dalmatian. Drove me close to insane & it kept raining the entire time we built.

I don’t know how you managed it... we have 25 feet as well. My food storage and counter space is 10” deep that’s it

(apparently I also hit the wrong buttons...)

Andrew and I are constantly in each others way... there’s no room for anything... somedays I seriously consider moving into the barn with the chickens... it smells better sometimes!

 

[Ribh]

I don’t know how you managed it... we have 25 feet as well. My food storage and counter space is 10” deep that’s it

(apparently I also hit the wrong buttons...)

Andrew and I are constantly in each others way... there’s no room for anything... somedays I seriously consider moving into the barn with the chickens... it smells better sometimes!

The day the caravan was dropped on our block the drought broke. We had no water & no power & all the kids got vomiting & diarrhea! The dunny was a makeshift outside one & our eldest, well trained from camping to use a tree, was surprised by a curlew & shot straight up his father like a monkey up a tree, & wrapped himself around his father's head gibbering. I couldn't believe I'd agreed to this madness. It was an absolute flea circus for the first month but we were so desperate for space we moved into the house as soon as we had one floor down & our kids used to run along the struts to get to the bathroom ~ & I do mean run!

 

[drumstick diva]

Ribh some day you will look back on this and laugh (I hope). When we moved in the house was only partially finished. But, we had to get out of the old house fast as the new occupants wanted in early.

We were all sleeping in the basement, plus ten dogs (I bred Cockers)were in various pens. Only the downstairs 1/2 bathroom was functional. We had to wash dishes in the basement laundry tub.

I still can't laugh about it but, now and then I do smile. BTW 3 working adults fighting for bathroom time, and one housekeeper - trying to hang on until they left.

 

[Kris5902]

We were lucky in our city house... all of our schedules were different enough that we managed 3, then 4 adults with one bathroom without too much conflict. So glad my plumber (uncle) and Husband didn’t let me rip out both bathrooms at once, so we only had one week of having to walk around the outside of the house to the basement suite bathroom while I renovated the upstairs one. Well, we had a working toilet upstairs (the one thing in a house I won’t try to move if I can avoid it!) but the wall was torn out and replaced with a sheet for most of that week which was a little awkward for our roommate with the adjoining bedroom!

One day I hope to also look back on the trailer life adventures and laugh, like I do about our renovations to that house. At least I don’t have kids in the mix here. I’m trying to figure out how to move my indoor cats up here though now that the weather is stable...

I miss them, they miss me, and I’m worried about the care they are getting from my mom. She keeps telling me about throwing things at them and screaming at them, and that they keep throwing up everywhere (because she doesn’t feed them according to my instructions, milk, chews snacks, and pepperoni sticks are not a substitute for cat food!)

 

[Kris5902]

So, yesterday was fun... I sold my first chicken, one of the Barnvelder boys for $20... he got to live and will get mature girlfriends to entertain, and I got pizza money. Of course the buyer showed up while we were feeding the cattle, so I had to drive back to the chickens. I didn’t run over the two trespassing, topless, man-bun wearing, dirty hippie hikers (no offense to true hippies, just this generation of knock offs). I now wish maybe I had... just a little. I called my husband who waited for them (brazenly walking down our 2 miles of private roadway) and asked them if they were aware they were on private property and a working farm. “No whatever man, we’re just walking through” they couldn’t care less.

We have two nice gentlemen out on our property bow hunting some pest goats for us who alerted us in the afternoon (asking if they could camp overnight tonight) that we had people camping on our property. So we had to hike up to the place they were spotted and found remains (still hot) of a camp fire. They were indeed camping on our property so it is “just trespassing”, and not the $5000+ fine they would get if they were caught camping/having a fire on parkland. There is no overnight camping or fires in our federal parks, very illegal.

View from where they camped


When I have more say in the operation of this farm I’m putting a giant gate at that end of the property and adding “working farm, bull at large” signs to every perimeter gate. Our property extends at least 30m past all of our fencing between us and the park, so if they make it to the fence they’ve been on our land for quite some time.

I also caught my “purse mouse”. I tend to leave my purse in the car... it had a Kleenex tissue pack, and I left a half finished chorizo sausage in it, because it seemed like a good, clean place to put it. Well, the next time I grabbed my purse (needed my wallet at the local store) I found a poof of torn up Kleenex and someone had been nibbling on my forgotten snack!

I’ve been being better about bringing it with me now and not just letting it sit outside. But I knew there’s a rodent living in the car now for a few weeks. I need to clean out all the farm mess, but am thinking I will wait til I’m not handling hay everyday with it. Why clean it heavily twice? I kept meaning to set some traps in the car for the mouse but just never quite got around to it.

So we gave the cows a special grain treat which I deliver in a 5 gallon bucket, so I tossed the bucket in the back seat area and promptly forgot about it. Yesterday morning I find my very fat purse bandit/car mouse lured into it by the tasty molasses smells and trapped. I did release him into a heavily wooded area well away from our trailer.
He’s going to make an owl very, very happy one night, I’m sure.



Yes, the tape measure is in inches, no it’s not a rat, it’s a local large mouse subspecies specific to our island. This is actually a small, but fat one!

I also set up a dust bath for the girls in a feed pan, Princess loved it! Yet one more thing to move with the tractors... but well worth the entertainment.